De Camp mentions Tolkien in his Introduction: "..let us give credit to [William] Morris for reviving the genre. Echoes of his novel [The Well at the World's End] are still heard in J.R.R. Tolkien's Fellowship of the Ring trilogy and in Fletcher Pratt's The Well of the Unicorn".

From the back

Here are tales of heroes of old - brawny adventurers ready to storm the gates of Hell with their valor and ready blades for a purse of gold ... or a wench. And here are a legion of wizards, ghouls, demons - and worse - casting dire enchantments and summoning all the powers of darkness to their aid. ...

In this anthology of heroic fantasy, SPRAGUE DE CAMP has collected stories which resound with the clash of battle in the eerie night ... which reek the unholy smoke of the magician's cell ... which draw the reader into a strange, thrilling, weird world of SWORDS AND SORCERY